A few years ago new writing was very zeitgeist. Everyone was doing it. Now, however, faith is being put back into the canonical writers of the 20th century.
With the return to the west end of plays such as Another Country and Skyline, revivals are pushing out new writing. When I met playwright of Another Country, Julian Mitchell, he told me that becoming a playwright was like learn to write again, that playwriting is a continuing education. So do we become better writers the older we get?
If age does bring wisdom and understanding which creates better and truer work then young writer wouldn’t stand a chance. However, if all writing is its authors view on the world, older writers would become stale and repetitive with age once they’d made their point clear. It all depends which side of the debate you fall: is creativity a skill like any other that can be honed or is there an innate spontaneity of creation which is unquantifiable and unteachable.
I am bias. I want to be able to say that young writing is the way forward. But what I have to say is that maybe age isn’t important. After all, my favourite play was written when its author was 70.
Taking the slogan of my favourite theatre (Theatre 503) what matters is making ground breaking theatre. What we say is what is important. It is likely that the young and old say and see things very differently and this is a gift. It is the variety which makes the industry interesting. We need both the new and the tradition. When it comes to the marketplace it’s about talent not age.
For a writer (as for everyone) to become old they must first have been young. Young playwriting must be encouraged if this art is to have a future. The style which is currently thought of as reckless and new will become the old tradition for the next generation.
I cannot speak for the old, I can only speak for the young and more accurately only for myself. Therefore, my conclusion will always be bias and I’m sure in 40 years my conclusion will be very different.
But today I’ll leave you with my current evaluation: the old may be able to say things better but maybe the young have something better to say.
The Next Creators. 